A Return to Normal
by MyLadyScribbler
Summary: Set at the end of KQ4. Rosella is home, Alexander is home and Graham's life has been saved. Life slowly returns to normal at Castle Daventry - that is, if anything can be construed as "normal" for Daventry's royal family.
1. Rosella

You have to admit, all of the events from the end of KQ3 through to the end of KQ4 must have been an emotional roller coaster for Daventry's royal family. So how did each of them cope with the return to normal (or a new normal, in Alexander's case) after Graham was healed?

There will be five chapters: one for each family member, and a group chapter at the end.

Author's note: My KQ stories, in the main, are based on the original seven games. Though I have been playing with a story idea involving Gwendolyn and Gart.

 **Chapter One: Rosella**

 _Rosella emerged from the cave at the top of the mountain. With more bravery than she felt, she put her hands on her hips. "All right, I'm here. What do you want?" she demanded._

 _The three-headed dragon looked at her for a moment. Then it shut its eyes - all six of them - in agony._

 _"I was trapped in this hideous body," the dragon said. "I will not be freed until a youth and a maiden, born of the same family but long separated, are reunited._ _"_

 _The scene shifted, to Graham falling to the floor in a slump as Valanice screamed._

 _"Help me…"_

 _"The king is ill. Fetch the healers at once!"_

 _The scene shifted again, to Lolotte's throne room._

 _"Are you a peasant girl who was foolish enough to wander here by mistake?" Lolotte demanded in a voice like nails grating on slate. "Or are you a spy sent here by my enemy Genesta?"_

 _And again, to Genesta's beach._

 _"Lolotte was not my mother," Edgar said. "That castle was never my home."_

 _"So where will you go now?" Rosella asked._

 _Edgar frowned. "I'm not sure. I keep having dreams, of some distant sky kingdom with rainbows and floating castles and…"_

Everything faded again, whirling and swirling until it faded to black, then blue.

Rosella's eyes flickered once, twice, then opened completely.

The blue she was seeing was the canopy over her bed. She was back in her room at Castle Daventry.

 _What time is it,_ she wondered sleepily.

It had been dawn when Genesta's homing spell deposited her back in the great hall. It was late morning outside now, with bright sunlight flooding in through the window and birds chirping in the trees outside.

After giving her father the magic life-saving fruit and telling her family about her strange odyssey through Tamir, she'd come back to her room and promptly collapsed on her bed.

Rosella rolled over onto her side and started to push herself upright, muttering and wincing. She felt sore all over, and she groaned as the memory of climbing up mountains, swimming to Genesta's island and getting out of a whale's throat came rushing back.

Then she realized also that she had been lying on top of a book. She pulled it out from underneath her and stared at it for a moment. It was one of her favorites, a book of legends from the kingdom of Hyrule. She'd been midway through the story about the magical ocarina when…

She didn't remember when her reading had been interrupted, to be honest. The last few days had been a blur.

She was home. Her father was alive. And her brother, whom no one had seen since he was a baby, was home again.

It was almost too much to take in.

Setting the book to one side, Rosella slowly sat up on the bed, leaned up against one of the bed posts and let her eyes travel around the room.

It was exactly as she'd left it: cluttered. The wardrobe door hung open and a few pairs of shoes spilled out, and the dressing table was covered with its usual jumble of combs, jewelry and bottles of scent. The writing desk held a confusion of books, quills and parchment, and there were even more books stacked on the floor next to the bed.

And a quick check of the night table - yes, the magical glowing crystal that she used for reading under the covers at night was still there.

Rosella smiled wanly. She'd had to explain to her mother and the servants many times over the years that she could find things just fine in the clutter.

The walls held the array of colorful posters that she'd collected whenever traveling musicians came to play in the castle town or at Castle Daventry. The old wooden sword and shield she'd played with as a child still stood in one corner, with the smart little bow and arrows that she'd been given on her eighth birthday.

Everything was familiar and friendly, and yet at the same time, all vaguely surreal: a world far removed from the monsters and zombies and other demons she'd just battled. There had been many moments in Tamir when she thought she'd never see Daventry and her family, let alone this room, again.

 _Is it all really over now?_ Rosella asked herself. _Or are we all just getting a breather before our lives get turned upside down again?_

Somehow, she guessed it was the latter.

The growling of Rosella's stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten much in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe she'd go down to the kitchen and see if there was a late breakfast to be had. And see how the others were doing.

The blue and white court dress she still had on would do, she decided. She went to the washstand in the corner, splashed some water on her face and cleaned her teeth. As she did so, she heard the door creak open and felt a tug on her skirt.

"Woof?" It was Maisie, one of the royal family's dogs. The shaggy old hound was a few generations descended from a dog that Graham had owned when he was a boy. "Woof!" Maisie repeated.

"All right, Maisie, I'm coming," Rosella laughed. She gave her hair a quick run-through with a comb and followed Maisie out into the corridor.

 **xKQx**

Reviews welcome! But this is my first - published, anyway - King's Quest fanfic, so please be gentle.

And yes, judging from Rosella's reading matter, it would seem that King's Quest and Legend of Zelda take place in the same universe...


	2. Graham

And now, we go from Rosella's POV to Graham's, as the castle doctor gives him one last look-over.

I make a reference in this chapter to the KQ2 remake and the story of the Father.

 **Chapter Two: Graham**

Graham sat on the edge of his bed, gazing out over the sun rising over the countryside.

It had almost been his last sunrise.

"How are you feeling, sire?" asked Master Fairdale, one of the castle healers.

"Amazing. Like I could climb up a beanstalk and outrun a giant all over again," Graham said.

"Well, not until we've finished the examination first." Fairdale took an instrument out of his robe pocket. It looked like a Y-shaped tube with a small funnel at one and and two earpieces at the other. "If you could take a deep breath for me, sire," he said, placing the funnel against Graham's back.

Graham did so.

"Very good. And your heartbeat sounds as it should." Fairdale put the instrument back in his pocket. "That fruit is quite remarkable," he said, glancing at the half-eaten fruit sitting on the night table.

"Indeed it is," Graham said. The magic fruit looked like a pear-shaped apple, but to Graham, it had tasted like a tropical fruit - a mango, maybe, or a papaya. "Even more remarkable is what Rosella had to go through to get it," he added.

It was hard to believe that this little fruit had pulled him back from the brink of death only a short time before. And it seemed like the fruit had taken one or two long-running aches with it.

Rosella had shared only the general details of her adventure in Tamir, but it sounded like she'd battled all manner of demons and ghouls.

"May I take it with me? The other healers will want to study it. The castle botanists, too," Master Fairdale said.

Graham didn't immediately respond.

"King Graham?" Fairdale asked.

"That's two for three," Graham said quietly.

"Sire?" Fairdale was confused for a moment. And then he remembered. "Oh. The Father's curse."

"You remember, then," Graham said.

"I was in the great hall when it happened. All of us were."

"It was…" Graham closed his eyes. "First the kingdom and my entire family would be in jeopardy. Then my heart would stop." And he was silent.

"You're thinking of the last part of the curse. That your heirs wouldn't reign over Daventry." Fairdale prompted.

Graham nodded. "But my children are both returned, both safe and well." He looked at Fairdale. "What do you make of it?"

Fairdale thought for a moment. "I don't pretend to be an expert in curses and deep magic, King Graham, beyond the magic that the other healers and I use," he began. "But seeing as the kingdom is restored, and your health, too…" He paused. "I think it shows that curses can be undone. If indeed the Father actually cast a curse."

Fairdale picked up the magic fruit, wrapped it in a cloth and put it in his pocket. "I wouldn't dwell on it too much, sire. One bridge and one troll at a time."

"I suppose you're right," Graham agreed. "Anyway, Master Fairdale, I suppose you've got better things to do than listen to a king's ramblings, so I'll let you go about your business."

Fairdale left the room with the magic fruit, and Graham was left with his thoughts.

Rosella had gone off to her room a few hours earlier to get some rest, and the gods knew she needed it. Graham had urged Valanice and Alexander to do the same, since they'd not left his side all night.

He'd been barely conscious for all those hours, hovering in a state between life and death. It had felt like a giant had taken his heart in its fist and wouldn't let go.

At one point, he thought he'd seen King Edward's ghost before him.

"Trying to join me in the kings' tomb, Graham?" the old king had tsked. "Not your time yet, boy."

Graham realized that he was holding his adventurer's cap in his hand. He turned it over in his hands, looking at it for a long moment.

Only twenty-four hours before, he had been tossing it to his children. It already seemed like ages ago.

Why had he decided to throw them the cap?

Was he really just passing the baton along to a new generation of adventurers? He wondered. Or had he just felt that he just couldn't do it anymore?

He'd saved the kingdom from ruin during the last days of King Edward's reign. But he felt like he couldn't do it during his own reign. He hadn't been able to find his son. He'd felt powerless when the dragon descended upon the kingdom.

He knew how much the people of Daventry looked up to him. He'd felt like he'd failed - he'd failed his family and his people.

Rising from the bed, Graham stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Down below, the castle was humming to life again, with the staff and guards running to and fro on their daily rounds.

A few people running through the courtyard spotted him and waved up at him eagerly, and he found himself waving back.

The sun rose higher into the sky. It was now mid-morning.

 _You've gotten yourself a new lease on life, king. Now you've got a family you need to spend time with. And a kingdom that needs mending._

"I don't think you should give away this cap just yet," Rosella had said. "You've got too many years ahead of you."

Graham put the adventurer's cap back on his head.

 **xKQx**

Reviews welcome!


	3. Alexander

**Chapter Three: Alexander**

Alexander had been offered his pick of the available chambers in the royal family's wing of the castle. He chose one overlooking the castle's west garden.  
Right now, the attendants were busy airing out the room and making up the bed with fresh linens.

It felt so strange to watch other people doing things for him. He'd asked the attendants if they wanted any help. Some of them gave him strange looks, but the senior chambermaid, a plump smiling woman named Melangell, laughed it off. "Oh, good heavens no, Your Highness, we've everything well in hand here."

The attendants finished with the room and left. Alexander sat down in a gray brocade armchair near the gray stone fireplace and looked around the room.

It was definitely a step up from his Spartan little room at Manannan's house. Here, the curtains on the windows and the bed were made from fine gray-green silk, and all the furniture was beautifully carved from the finest woods. But there wasn't much of anything in the room to suggest anything about who lived there now.

The massive walnut wardrobe, large enough to seat three people comfortably, was empty. The clothes Alexander had on at the moment, a borrowed tunic and trousers made from good-quality homespun, were all he had for now in the way of clothes. But the castle tailors had immediately taken his measurements as soon as he'd finally left the king's - sorry, his father's - chambers, so Alexander guessed that the wardrobe wouldn't be empty for long.

His ragged old slave clothes had been consigned to the ragbag. The fire would also have been a suitable fate for them, he thought.

There weren't any books to fill the shelves just yet, but Alexander wondered off-hand if the Castle Daventry library had any books of Llewdor legends among them. The only effects he had sitting on the shelf next to the chair were the motley potion ingredients, the magic teleporting stone, and Manannan's old wand.

He'd thought about taking _The Sorcery of Old_ , but the enormous volume of crackling vellum would have been excess weight to carry. So instead he'd copied out the spells he'd found to be of use onto an old scrap of parchment.

He'd given the pirates' treasure chest over to the castle treasury. It had seemed the only decent thing to do with it.

Outside the room, Alexander could hear the hustle and bustle of the castle as the servants and advisors went about their business. The mood seemed to have brightened considerably in the last several hours, now that he and Rosella were home and the king had been cured from his heart attack.

Alexander didn't feel quite ready to go out and mingle with the rest of the castle, even though he knew half the kingdom was dying to meet him. See what he looked like. And hear where he'd been.

He leaned his head back against the chair and let out a sigh.

He should be happy, overwhelmingly happy. And he was. And yet, at the same time, he couldn't help but feel confused and overwhelmed. He'd been feeling that way ever since he stepped into the oracle's cave in Llewdor. In that instant, everything that Alexander thought he knew about himself had been turned upside down.

All his life, he'd known himself as Gwydion the slave boy from Llewdor. Now he was Alexander, a beloved son and brother, and a prince of Daventry.

Somehow, it didn't feel like either the name or the title fit him just right yet. More than once already, someone had called his name three times before he realized that they were speaking to him.

And he still expected to see Manannan or his odious black cat appear from around the corner…

"Mrrow?"

Alexander turned and jumped nearly a foot in the air. A black cat wearing a fine brocade collar had wandered into the room. It looked at him curiously, tail twitching.

"Raven, is that you?" a voice asked. Melangell came back into the room. "Oh, there you are," she said indulgently as she picked the cat up. "This is Raven, Your Highness, she's one of the castle pets. She's a good girl, she won't bother you none…" She stopped when she saw Alexander's face. "Oh, I see. That wizard that took you had a black cat, didn't he?"

Alexander nodded, not knowing what else to say.

Melangell studied him for a moment. "It must be a big change, realizing who you are, going from one life to another," she said matter-of-factly. "Probably a bit of a shock."

"It is," Alexander said.

Melangell smiled sympathetically. "Your father had to adjust too. He wasn't born a prince. He was a knight, a king's man. They say he took some time to adjust to castle life. But he did. And so will you. Just take all the time you need."

"That's kind of you to say so."

"I can take Raven elsewhere, if she bothers you."

"Oh, no, that's fine," Alexander said quickly.

Melangell set Raven back down on the floor and left the room. Alexander could hear her calling out orders to some of the other chambermaids to get to work on cleaning the rooms in the south wing.

Raven began rubbing against Alexander's legs, purring.

Alexander looked at the cat for a moment. Then, slowly, he picked her up.

Raven curled up against him, nuzzling her head into his chin and continuing to purr.

Slowly, as Alexander scratched Raven on her neck, the confused feelings started to go away, just a little bit.

 **xKQx**

Reviews welcome!


	4. Valanice

**Chapter Four: Valanice**

"A celebratory banquet," the castle seneschal was saying. "Or a grand ball with all of the kingdom invited."

"I agree!" the head cook said. "I have several new dishes from Serenia and Eusperia that I have been meaning to experiment with, and…"

"Absolutely not," Valanice said, trying to stave off the oncoming headache.

Both the seneschal and the head cook looked disappointed. But behind them, Valanice could see some of the kitchen assistants breathing a sigh of relief.

"But…Your Majesty, surely everything that has happened calls for…," the seneschal said.

"There will be time enough for celebrations in the days ahead," Valanice said firmly. "What the king, the children, and I, need first and foremost is a few days of peace and quiet."

The head cook nodded. "If Your Majesty insists."

"Here's your tea, Your Majesty." One of the kitchen girls came up carrying a fine china cup.

"Right on time. Thank you, Rhona," Valanice said warmly. Taking the cup, she stood and left the kitchen.

She'd tried to get some sleep after the doctors had declared Graham to be cured, but sleep had proven to be impossible. So she'd gotten up to go for a walk around the castle, stopping at the kitchen to ask for a cup of tea. And it was during that stop that the courtiers and senior castle staff had started clamoring for a grand celebration.

Her walk back through the castle took her through the portrait gallery just outside the great hall. She walked slowly along, gazing up at the paintings up on the walls.

There were portraits of Graham and Valanice along the castle walls, taken at almost every stage of life: after Graham became king, after he and Valanice were married, at many points between then and the present. There were portraits of Rosella, as a baby in a christening gown (Rosella had repeatedly asked for this portrait to be hidden from view), as a young girl in play clothes, and one done last year: a confident teenager being trained to run a kingdom.

No such portraits existed of Alexander.

How was he going to adjust to his new life?

He wasn't a babe in arms anymore, but a youth on the brink of manhood.

Valanice had heard stories, of long-missing children returned to their families, but then unable to settle back into their own lives. They felt restless and angry, and haunted by too many ghosts of the past.

And Rosella. She had been through so much in her short life as it was, more than any seventeen-year-old girl should be expected to go through. Valanice wondered if she was going to be her usual exuberant, spunky self after all of this, or if she was going to start walking around under a cloud.

Valanice reached the end of the gallery and turned back into the great hall. The cavernous, tapestried room was empty at the moment, but it would soon fill with courtiers and advisers on the day's business. The sun still rose and the kingdom still had to be run, in spite of dragons and monsters and illness.

Her gaze fell on the magic mirror, a shiny oval of silvery glass in a polished mahogany frame. She walked up to it and gazed deeply into its silvery depths. Her own face - a little bit lined with age, auburn hair starting to show its first traces of silver - stared back at her. "Not too bad, all things considered," she found herself saying quietly.

The mirror had faded with Alexander's disappearance. Somehow, they managed to get along without it - the kingdom had learned some lessons from King Edward's many mistakes, after all - but it was an echo of a gaping hole in the family. And in their hearts.

It seemed that all of her life, Valanice had been dealing with a fractured family. Her mother, Coignice, had died when Valanice was a young girl. Her father, Cedric, died a few years before the adventure that led to Graham and Valanice becoming husband and wife.

Her thoughts wandered back to the portrait gallery.

Yes, that's what needed to be done first and foremost, she decided. A new picture of the family.

There was something that one of the court wizards had been talking about. A mage had come up with a way to capture a person's image instantly on a piece of paper. And Valanice had always wanted to see how it worked.

"Mervyn, I wish to speak to you," she said into the mirror.

The mirror's image swirled, revealing a frazzled-looking wizard in a tower laboratory.

"What? Oh!" Mervyn hastily smoothed down his wild graying hair. "Ah, Queen Valanice, how may I help you?"

"Are you still working on that special picture-taking box?"

"Indeed. I've nearly worked all of the kinks out. It didn't blow up the laboratory the last time I pressed the button."

"That is reassuring. If you could bring it with you the next time you come to the castle, I would be most obliged."

"I shall, Queen Valanice, and…got to go!" Mervyn yelled as some strange device out of view of the mirror started to fizz and crackle.

The mirror's image died, and Valanice found herself laughing for the first time in several days.

A leather ball suddenly thwacked against the opposite wall. This was immediately followed by a dog's claws scrabbling against the marble floor. "Go fetch, Maisie!" Rosella yelled from an outside corridor.

The ball bounced backwards and rolled up against Valanice's foot.

Maisie came bounding into the great hall through one of the doorways. She spotted the ball, but seeing as it had landed next to Valanice, she walked over, sat down and tilted her head quizzically.

Through the opposite door, Valanice could see Rosella looking for Maisie. And behind her came Alexander, with Raven draped around his shoulders.

Valanice smiled, picked up the ball, and threw it. "Fetch!"

 **xKQx**


	5. A Family Reunited

**Chapter Five: A Family, Reunited**

"All right, everyone who thought they'd never eat again, either at this table or in this life, dig in," Graham said.

That night, the entire royal family of Daventry sat down to dinner together for the first time in years.

As promised, the castle kitchens prepared a simple - but delicious - three-course meal for four.

And the entire family sat clustered around one end of the long dining room table.

"Alexander, take some more of the roasted potatoes, you look half-starved," Valanice urged. "And have some of the stewed apples."

"Don't fill up too much," Graham said, spearing another piece of meat from the serving platter. "I heard a few rumors that there's plum tart with custard for dessert."

As the meal went on, the family began talking.

It was almost as if the long separations over the past several years had never happened.

Rosella started off with a more in-depth story about Tamir, from battling the troll for the magic fruit, riding the unicorn and evading the ogres, to dodging zombies in the manor graveyard and finally defeating Lolotte. "She cursed me from her death bed, vowing that she would have her revenge some day," Rosella said with relish.

She talked a little bit about her farewell with Edgar in front of Genesta's castle. But she decided to tread carefully with the details on that. "He was a good friend," she said thoughtfully. "I'd liked to have gotten to know him better. Where he came from."

"Well, maybe you'll find that out someday," Graham said. Sensing that Rosella wanted to change the subject, he asked, "So, tell me what you did with the seeds from the magic fruit?"

"I told the castle botanists what the swamp behind the mountains in Tamir was like. And they gave me some pots in a warm corner of the greenhouse." She paused. "I don't know if they'll sprout. Maybe the soil here is too different. But I'm going to try."

"Very good," Valanice said. "Do you remember the old story about the king and the tree seedling?"

"The king's advisors said it would take 100 years for the seedling to grow to full strength," Rosella said. "And the king said, 'Let's plant it right now, without delay.'"

"Precisely." Valanice nodded and took another bite of food.

"I'm going to try to get some of the sprouts back to Genesta. Maybe she can plant a new tree in her garden. It'd sure be easier than trying to get past that troll again," Rosella continued.

Alexander had mostly been listening quietly to all of this. But after some coaxing from the others, he began telling the family about his sea voyage from Llewdor to Daventry. The rest of the family listened, wide-eyed, as Alexander started with meeting the pirates in the tavern. He told the story, hesitantly at first, but soon he was practically waving his arms as he described scurrying up the hold ladder and trying to avoid the pirates.

"And then I poured the sleeping powder out on the deck, and I cried out, 'Slumber, Henceforth!'" Alexander said. "And they all keeled over right then and there!" He paused to take a quick sip from his goblet. "And then I jumped off the ship, swam to shore, found their treasure, and…well, you know the rest."

"They must be cursing you by now!" Rosella laughed. She looked over to Graham. "Your turn!"

"Well, now, let's see." Graham tilted back in his chair. "I brought home a chest of treasure too, but I had to climb a beanstalk to get it. I've crossed paths with a few witches, and I'm here to talk about it. I've wandered through my share of haunted houses and encountered quite a few ghosts and ghouls. And while I haven't turned into an eagle yet, I have flown across Daventry with some help from a condor."

"What about you, Qu-" Alexander caught himself. "Mother?"

"Well," Valanice said. "I haven't quite had the same first-hand adventuring experiences that the rest of you have had. Though having to deal with Hagatha…now that I think about it, that was an adventure unto itself," she said. She reached for Graham's hand and squeezed it. "And it brought your father into my life, and you two as well."

The reminiscences were interrupted by the arrival of the plum tart and the custard for dessert.

"I propose a toast." Graham lifted his goblet. "To a family, and to a kingdom."

"To home, and love," Valanice said.

"To no more evil wizards," Alexander said.

"And to a break from dragons, trolls, and curses for a little while," Rosella finished.

 **xKQx**

There were two chairs arranged in the solarium a few days later. Mervyn had his magical box set up on a brass tripod. Next to it was an easel with a giant piece of silvery gray parchment.

Graham and Valanice sat down in the chairs, with Alexander and Rosella standing behind them.

Mervyn crouched down under a black cloth behind the box. "All right, everyone, hold still. One…two…three…"

There was a loud click.

"Uh-oh…"

And then the box exploded in a loud shower of purple sparks and smoke.

"Good heavens, man, is it supposed to do that?" Graham coughed, waving his adventurer's cap in front of his face.

"I'm terribly sorry, Your Majesty, it's supposed to have all the malfunctions worked out - wait! Behold!"

On the canvas, the images of the royal family started to appear, in perfect detail.

The family gathered around, gazing in awe at the picture.

Until…

"We'll have to do it over. I blinked," Rosella said.

There were groans and grumbling as everyone took their places again. The process had to be repeated a few more times.

But eventually, the new portrait was taken to everyone's satisfaction, framed, and hung up in the portrait gallery.

A family. Together again at last.

 **xKQx**

And that's that, at least for now! Reviews welcome!


End file.
